Apple M1 Sillicon Chip REVEALED: What can it do, which Macbooks and Macs use it?

By Daryl Baxter

At Apple's 'One More Thing' event on the 10th November, they officially announced the first 'Apple Silicon' chip; the M1.

This is a culmination of ten years, ever since the first chip, the 'A4' in the iPhone 4, arrived back in 2010.

Now, the 'M1' chip is touted to be up to 2x faster than what's out on the PC laptop market currently.

With that, here's a rundown on what the features for M1 are, and what Macs will be featuring the chip.

Release Date

All three of the new Macs featuring M1 can be ordered today, and will be delivered next week.

Features

The M1 is the first Apple Silicon chip for their Mac line of computers.

  • Four effiency cores
  • 8-Core CPU
  • 5 nanometer process
  • All unified CPU, GPU, RAM and Neural Engine
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With the GPU side, this is also integrated into the M1. It's an 9-Core GPU that apparently brings up to 2x performance on a laptop integrated GPU.

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It's interesting to see PCI Express and USB 4, which raises the possibility of users being able to insert an external GPU in the future. Perhaps in an M1 Mac Pro.

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Which Macs?

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The MacBook Air, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro were announced at the event to feature the M1 chip.

The new MacBook Air has been announced, which features Apple Silicon, running at 3.5x faster than the previous generation. The price starts at $999.

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  • 3X faster CPU performance
  • 5X faster graphics
  • 4K video editing, three at once
  • Better front camera with ML quality processing
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The Mac Mini is also coming with M1, featuring 3X faster performance compared to the previous quad-core variant. This is their first desktop Mac that features M1, so expect massive performance gains here, as it only is powered from a plug. It starts at $699.

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The final Mac announced was the 13 inch MacBook Pro.

  • 8 Core M1 CPU
  • Playback 8K footage with no slowdown
  • Neural Engine for apps that use the ML features
  • Active cooling system to keep its high performance throughout a task
  • Up to 20 Hours of Battery depending on tasks
  • $1299
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